


Princess Out

by SweetSerenity



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 6x03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 17:42:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18878059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetSerenity/pseuds/SweetSerenity
Summary: Clarke resigns as princess.An alternative scene for 6x03.





	Princess Out

Russell was droning on in his smooth diplomat’s voice, but Clarke wasn’t hearing a word of it. He had heard a yes. They had all heard a yes. But her mouth hadn’t actually shaped the word. 

When they were alone again, just the refugees from Earth, she took a deep breath. “You can’t do that. You can’t spend days making snarky comments and treating me like a monster, then turn around and ask me to play princess for you.”

Bellamy made a move to step forward, to put a friendly hand on her shoulder and talk her out of making a scene. She wished that she could let him. That they could play pretend and go back to the default position, back to the status quo. “Don’t. I appreciated the vote of confidence Bellamy. But you didn’t mean it. Not really.” She lowered her voice to give them the illusion of privacy, but she knew everyone would be straining their ears. “Thank you for wanting to mean it. But you aren’t there yet. We need to take our time with this forgiveness thing, not push through it because it makes things easier.”

She had to keep talking. Her resolution was wafer thin. She was a ball of insecurity and guilt. She was today’s punching bag. She was in no condition to take the lead. And yet there was still a part of her that wanted to. A part of her that was a control freak, that wanted to be in charge. She couldn’t kill it off, but she could repress it.

 She looked around at the rest of the motley crew before her, meeting their eyes one by one. “I’m not a dictator. I won’t lead people who don’t want me to lead. Someone else needs to step up. Why haven’t you?”

“Too cowardly?” Murphy bristled, but the comment hadn’t been for him. She didn’t want to correct him out loud, because she didn’t want to admit her real target. It felt disloyal to even think the name. But the question still lingered in her mind. Why had he been so eager to place the crown on her head and not his own?  

“Afraid to get your hands dirty?” For the first time since waking from cryo, she refused to back down from Raven’s glare. She had lost count of the amount of times Raven had bossed them through doing something impossible to save all of their asses in a crisis, but she kept shying away from the politics of it all. It was an admirable instinct, but it was holding her back.

“Anyone in this room could speak for us. There are no outsiders anymore.” There were people, like Clarke, who weren’t as _in_ as they wanted to be, but no one could deny them their place at the table. She saw the myriad of ways that Echo and Emori had become entwined with the others, and it gave her hope for herself.

Clarke closed her eyes in an effort to hold back the tears. “I love all of you. I have faith in all of you. But until you can say the same about me again, I can’t be your princess or chancellor or leader. Someone else needs to step up. So who will it be?”


End file.
